SMS Emden: Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	SMS Emden	Wikidata label
Ship type	cruiser, light cruiser	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	Scuttled	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	German Reich	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Imperial German Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	Scuttling of the German Fleet in Scapa Flow	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	North Atlantic Ocean	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Scotland	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 3 km from land
Position	58.9246, -3.1073	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

SMS Emden ("His Majesty's Ship Emden") was a German light cruiser belonging to the Königsberg class, built during the First World War. Emden served in the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) until the end of the war, at which point she was ceded to France. The ship was named after the previous Emden, which had been destroyed at the Battle of Cocos earlier in the war. She mounted an Iron Cross on her stem-head in honor of the earlier Emden. The new cruiser was laid down in 1914 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, launched in February 1916, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in December 1916. Armed with eight 15 cm SK L/45 guns, the ship had a top speed of 27.5 kn (50.9 km/h; 31.6 mph).

After her commissioning, she was assigned to serve as a flotilla leader for torpedo boats. She participated in only one major action, Operation Albion, in October 1917. There, she shelled Russian gun batteries and troop positions and engaged Russian destroyers and gunboats. The ship also led a successful, albeit minor, operation against British shipping in the North Sea in December 1917. After the end of the war, she was interned with the rest of the German fleet in Scapa Flow.

Location

Recorded position: 58.9246, -3.1073 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
Nearest coast: Scotland

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article SMS Emden (1916) (revision 1375908848), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.